Each week, we search for the most exciting and thought-provoking shows, screenings, and events, both digitally and in-person in the New York area. See our picks from around the world below. (Times are all ET unless otherwise noted.)

Monday, January 10–Sunday, February 13

Serge Maheu, Passage in the Garment District, New York. Photo courtesy of the Garment District Alliance.

1. “Passage” in the Garment District, New York

The latest public art show from the Garment District Alliance is a tunnel of 20 rings of light designed by Serge Maheu for the 2017 Montréal en Lumière festival. The illuminated display pulsates and change colors, and is accompanied by a musical soundtrack.

Location: Broadway between 39th and 40th Streets, New York
Price: Free
Time: On view daily at all times

—Sarah Cascone

Wednesday, January 12–Saturday, February 19

Lizbeth Mitty, Conjuring, 2021 Courtesy of Harper’s

2. “Lizbeth Mitty: Postcard Perfect” at Harper’s Apartment, New York

Don’t miss Brooklyn-based artist Lizbeth Mitty’s first solo show at Harper’s Apartment, made up of new paintings made during the pandemic. At a time when people are starved for travel, these paintings depict tropical landscapes that invite the viewer to escape into them. Mitty uses an acrylic medium to achieve a fluidity and looseness in these works giving them a dreamy and ethereal quality. She paints from memory and evokes a state of mind, adding to the sublime nature of these works.

Location: Harper’s Apartment, 51 East 74th Street, Apartment 2X, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening, Wednesday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Thursday, January 13–Saturday, February 19

Peter Nadin painting A Proposal to Peter Nadin (1979; realized 2022). Courtesy Off Paradise.

3. “Claude Rutault, A Proposal to Peter Nadin” at Off Paradise, New York

Forty-three years ago, the French Conceptualist Claude Rutault, then in a residency at PS1, handed fellow artist Peter Nadin a proposal, or “protocol,” that he hoped Nadin would realize in Nadin’s experimental artists’ space 84 West Broadway in TriBeCa. The proposal began: “As the person in charge of a space, Peter Nadin will have to make a certain number of decisions, just as for any show.” Nadin never realized the protocol, and for more than four decades it remained a text in Rutault’s archives. About a decade ago, French-born, New York-based gallerist Natacha Polaert formed a friendship with Rutault and came across the proposal in his files. Intrigued, she made a promise to the artist that she would seek out Nadin in the hopes that the text could, at long last, become a work. In 2021, Nadin agreed to take up the proposal and finally bring it into the world. In a nod to the passage of time since Rutault first gave it to him, Nadin has made the decision to fulfill the protocol by painting a single canvas in bright lemon yellow 42 times over, plus one. The paint extends beyond the canvas and onto the wall, leaving “ghost marks” throughout the gallery, suggesting years gone by. The show, which will have an all-day opening on January 13, will be directly followed by “The Distance From A Lemon to Murder,” a show of works by Nadin at the same gallery (March 3–May 8).

Location: Off Paradise, 120 Walker Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Pac Pobric

Thursday, January 13–Saturday, February 19

Genevieve Cohn, Just Like Moths to the Moon, 2021 Courtesy of Monya Rowe Gallery

4. “Genevieve Cohn: Drawing Down the Moon” at Monya Rowe Gallery, New York

Monya Rowe Gallery presents “Drawing Down the Moon,” the first New York solo exhibition of Boston-based artist Genevieve Cohn. In this female-centric show, Cohn “explores ideas centered around collaboration, education, collection and creation,” especially ideas involving groups of women participating in rituals to access a different plane of understanding. From references to the ancient Celtic Samhain Festivals of Ireland to the magic and history of witches and witchcraft, these brightly hued paintings depict rituals connected to the changing of seasons. “I am interested in the way that rituals create something physical and tangible to try to access something beyond our threshold for understanding,” says Cohn according to the gallery statement.

Location: Monya Rowe Gallery, 224 West 30th Street, No. 1005, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening Reception, Thursday, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Alec Soth, White Bear Lake, Minnesota (2019). Photo courtesy of Sean Kelly Gallery

5. “Alec Soth: A Pound of Pictures” at Sean Kelly Gallery, New York

Alec Soth’s fourth solo show at Sean Kelly Gallery asks the question, “How do you measure a photograph?” The gallery is showcasing photographs made between 2018 and 2021 while on a series of road trips. Staying true to Soth’s style, they capture the ordinariness of American life and elevate it to something poetic. The artist will be present at the opening.

Location: Sean Kelly Gallery, 475 10th Avenue, New York
Price: Free
Time: Opening Reception, Thursday, 6 p.m.–8 p.m.

—Neha Jambhekar

Friday, January 14–Saturday, August 13

©Peter Kuper, courtesy of NYPL/W.W. Norton.

6. “Peter Kuper’s Intersects: Where Arthropods and Homo Sapiens Meet” at the New York Public Library

Peter Kuper worked on his forthcoming graphic novel, INterSECTS, as a fellow at the New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers during 2020 and 2021—allowing him access to the halls during the closures of lockdown. In the absence of human patrons, he imagined the library’s grand Beaux-Arts architecture instead as home to swarms of insects. This surreal vision is now on view at the building that inspired it.

Location: New York Public Library, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Monday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.; Sunday, 1 p.m.–5 p.m.

—Tanner West

Through Saturday, January 15

Alexander Calder, Sandy’s Butterfly (1964). Collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York, gift of the artist. Photo ©2021 Calder Foundation, New York/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.

7. “Alexander Calder: Modern from the Start” at the Museum of Modern Art, New York

Alexander Calder was one of the first artists to show at the MoMA, just months after the institution opened in 1930. Over 90 years later, the museum celebrates its special relationship with the great sculptor, who it commissioned to create several major works in his unofficial role as “house artist.” The exhibition includes the newly restored Man-Eater with Pennants, in the MoMA sculpture garden, on view for first time in more than half a century.

Location: Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53rd Street, New York
Price: $25 general admission
Time: Sunday–Friday, 10:30 a.m.–5 p.m.; Saturday, 10:30 a.m.–7 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through January 22

Helène Aylon, Mirror Covering (1987). Estate of Helène Aylon. Photo courtesy of Kerry Schuss Gallery and Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects.

8. “Helène Aylon: Reflections” at Kerry Schuss Gallery, New York

Leslie Tonkonow Artworks and Projects co-organized this exhibition on Helène Aylon, an activist and feminist artist who died of COVID-19 in 2020. Billed as featuring “five decades of reflective art,” the show includes early paintings industrial materials like Plexiglas and aluminum from the “Elusive Silver” (1969–73) series, as well as her mournful “Mirror Covering” works from 1987, featuring mirrors draped with gauze in memory of the Holocaust.

Location: Kerry Schuss Gallery, 73 Leonard Street, Tribeca, New York
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Saturday, January 15–Sunday, February 20

Vija Celmins, Untitled (Ocean), 2014. Jack Shear Collection, ©Vija Celmins, courtesy Matthew Marks Gallery.

9. “Take Three: Jarrett Earnest” at the Drawing Center, New York

This week marks the opening of the final installment of the Drawing Center’s three-part show, “Ways of Seeing: Three Takes on the Jack Shear Drawing Collection.” Critic and curator Jarrett Earnest delves into the drawing holdings of artist and curator Jack Shear, president of the Ellsworth Kelly Foundation, organizing the presentation around two works by Henri Michaux and Vija Celmins.

Location: The Drawing Center, 35 Wooster Street, New York
Price: Free
Time: Wednesday–Sunday, 12 p.m.–6 p.m.

—Nan Stewert

Through Sunday, January 23

Official portrait of United States Supreme Court Justice Ruth Joan Bader Ginsburg. Photo by Steve Petteway, collection of the Supreme Court of the United States.

10. “Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg” at the New-York Historical Society

The late Supreme Court justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg is honored with this exhibition celebrating her roles as a keen legal mind as well as a wife and mother, women’s rights pioneer, and unlikely internet darling. Among the objects on view are archival photographs and documents, contemporary art, and historical artifacts, including one of her judicial robes. It also includes the official portraits, on loan from the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., of Ginsburg and Sandra Day O’Connor, the first two women to sit on the nation’s highest court.

Location: New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West at Richard Gilder Way (West 77th Street), New York
New York
Price: $22 general admission
Time: Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday, 11 a.m.–5 p.m.; Friday, 11 a.m.–8 p.m.

—Sarah Cascone

Through Saturday, February 5 

Installation view “Sherrill Roland: Hindsight Bias” 2021. Courtesy of Tanya Bonakdar Gallery.

11. “Sherrill Roland: Hindsight Bias” at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, New York

In his first exhibition with Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, North Carolina-based artist Sherrill Roland presents four new, poetic interdisciplinary bodies of work which together explore the aftermath of a deep personal trauma—the artist spent 10 months wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he didn’t commit. Following his exoneration and release, Roland’s artistic practice became a means for emotional release as he explored cultural ideas of innocence and identity. “Hindsight bias,” the title of the show, names the phenomenon in which memories are processed through the lens of acquired wisdom. In this show, through minimalist, abstract gestures, the artist examines how his own worldview was affected by his imprisonment. Referencing his personal archive of letters, books, and commissary lists, the artist used only materials available to him while in prison to construct the works. These range from an installation of large-scale acrylic cubes reminiscent of a prison basketball court to lightbox sculptures based on the letters Roland wrote to the mother of his daughter, who was born while he was imprisoned.

Location: Tanya Bonakdar Gallery, 521 West 21st Street #1
Price: Free
Time: Tuesday–Saturday, 10 a.m.–6 p.m.

—Katie White